


like bees to honey

by torchsong (brella)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Crushes, F/F, First Meetings, Neighbors, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 16:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18253355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/torchsong
Summary: She smiles again, more than just a sliver this time, and it makes her eyes glow, like moonlight through smoke. “I’m a witch, too. Um, fortune-telling. I’m not always very… good with people… but I think we…”She trails off, combing some of her hair aside again, adjusting her glasses. The way she pushes them up—two fingers at the edge of the frame—is so horribly cute that Hitoka is gripped by the familiar feeling that she might die.But in a pleasant way, for once.





	like bees to honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Confused_Foam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confused_Foam/gifts).



> Happy InterHigh, Confused_Foam! I lurked in your Bookmarks and on your Twitter and saw that you like sort of fantastical AUs so I thought I would go that route... I hope that was the right call. <3 
> 
> In the end this wound up being more of a glimpse than the whole saga in my head... but I had fun with it! 
> 
> [♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hu-8AvHDGw).

_Congratulations, Yachi-san!!!_ This is what the card with the daisies on it reads, in Hinata’s nearly illegible scrawl. Hitoka has had the card open on her coffee table every day since she moved into her new apartment, which she knows isn’t saying much, since that’s only been five days, and for the first day her coffee table was a cardboard box labeled NOTEBOOKS, and it’s probably a little sad to brag about having a card open so that you can keep looking at the nice things your friend said about you, especially when you didn’t really do anything to earn them other than pass the exam for your witching license, which anyone can do if they study hard enough, and—

Anyway, Hitoka likes the card.

The rest of it reads,  _You’ll be the best witch ever! And then when you’re super powerful you can make me taller! Do your best!!!!!!_ And it has a little drawing of a mini Hinata, cheering her on. Or maybe just a little spiky bush with a face? It’s hard to tell. Hinata is Hitoka’s best friend, but he maybe doesn’t have the best grasp of human anatomy.

Hitoka has had her witching license for almost a week. The hard copy had come in the mail, gilded around the edges like a fancy diploma, and she has it in a pink frame over the TV so that she can stare at it from the futon when she's going to sleep.  _Let it be heretofore known that the undersigned, Hitoka Yachi, seventh daughter, is licensed in the prefecture of Miyagi to practice the following magicks: horticultural, mending. The undersigned is a registered kitsune-user with responsibility for the following kitsune familiar: Hinata Shouyou._

All of the prefectural offices print theirs in a designated color of ink; Hitoka's license is in Miyagi's striking black, columns of spidery kanji spaced evenly on the faintly glowing washi.

“You studied well,” her mother had told her over the phone, perhaps the highest compliment she had ever paid Hitoka. “Hard and earnest work yields results, Hitoka. Give it your all, and it will be fulfilling.”

Opening the tube in which her license had been mailed to her, on one of those drizzly mornings that's part and parcel for Sendai on the cusp of spring, had filled Hitoka with the first full-bodied rush of optimism she’d felt since the notion of making a living as a witch had even budded with hesitant hope in her mind in her first year of high school—it had been so real, and it had been  _hers_ , her name, her work, her promise.

But most of her time in Sendai, a city whose magical energy had buzzed in her ears so loudly that for the first two nights she hadn't even been able to sleep, has been spent doing a whole lot of... sitting against the sliding door to her narrow balcony with her laptop balanced on her knees, imagining elaborate scenarios that might explain how responses to her offerings on the freelance boards may have slipped into another dimension, instead of just not existing to begin with.

She knows that it’s silly to expect the work to come right away, especially for a novice, but still, it feels kind of exploitative to be living in magical co-op housing without contributing much of anything, other than writing up organized chore lists and beating the unused mildewy futons on the roof in the cold morning. All of her neighbors are people her own age who are already so accomplished and responsible and… and  _cool_.

The spirit investigators who live upstairs, Iwaizumi-san and Oikawa-kun, are so prolific that even Hitoka had heard of them, all the way out in the mountainous boonies she called home. And Sugawara-kun down the hall is a  _shapeshifter_ _,_  and he can turn into a crow, and converse with other crows, whenever he wants. And Ushijima-san on the first floor looks kind of like a murderer, but he's a master of pyrokinesis. And Hitoka can’t help thinking sometimes (like right now) that maybe the best course of action at this point, you know, in comparison, is to live in self-imposed hermitry under her polka-dot quilt for all of eternity.

Is it too embarrassing to take her quilt out when it’s almost 3 PM and the sun is still out? Well—no one would even know, right? Isn’t that the glory of being an adult?

Hitoka closes her laptop and leans back to stare longingly upside-down at the linen closet. Maybe just this once...

As she starts to get to her feet, there’s a knock at the door.

“Eep!” Hitoka says, scrambling to save her laptop when she nearly kicks it into the air.

She ends up clutching it to her chest, whirling her head around so fast that some of her hair ends up in her mouth. The overheated base presses into her arms.

“Excuse me,” a voice calls, muffled. “Yachi-san? Yachi Hitoka-san?”

Hitoka almost sends the laptop flying again. The voice is  _pretty_. Like a piece of colored glass catching the sunlight, like a rushing river.

“Y-Yes!” she answers in what can best be described as a squeak, setting her laptop on the coffee table and scrambling to her feet a little too fast. Her socks slip on the hardwood floor. “Coming!”

Her hand trembles over the doorknob before she turns it. The air outside rushes in; it smells sweet like plum blossoms, and far in the distance, Hitoka can see rain clouds gathering at the pale sky’s edge. And the girl in her doorway is—

“Ah, hello.”

“So pretty,” Hitoka blurts out.

The girl blinks at her from behind a pair of pink glasses, cheeks coloring, small mouth dropping open. Her black hair glints like the volcanic glass Hitoka had to crush sometimes in alchemy class, one side of it tucked behind an unpierced ear. There’s a tiny mole at the edge of her lip, and she’s wearing a gray anorak raincoat and running shoes, and her messenger bag has a keychain of the Jagabee mascot dangling from the strap.

“Day!” Hitoka squawks. “So pretty—day—outside! Hello! Nice to meet you! I’m Yachi! Hitoka is fine!”

“A-Are you sure?” the girl asks, leaning back a little, probably because Hitoka looks like a total maniac.

“Yep! Totally fine! Hi!” Hitoka wipes her hands off on her leggings for no reason. Oh, no, her hair probably looks so messy—does she have a hairtie? Shoot; she doesn’t. Be prepared, Hitoka! “Um, what can I, I mean, what do you, um…”

“Pardon me; my name is Shimizu. I live next door…” She points down the hall to Hitoka’s left. “And I just realized I hadn’t introduced myself. I’ve been out of town. Sawamura said we had a new tenant.”

“Sawa...mura...?” She should definitely remember who this is; she probably seems so rude! Think; _think_! “Um, I…”

A sliver of a smile appears on Shimizu’s face and Hitoka’s stomach flutters and leaps to meet it. “It’s all right. I’m sure there are a lot of people here to remember.”

“I’m sorry!” Hitoka exclaims, bowing as low as she can without kneeling. “I’ll be a better neighbor! I promise! I’m sorry! Please forgive me!”

“No, no, really,” Shimizu says. “Sawamura’s always talking to people without telling them his name. It isn’t your fault. He lives on the third floor with Suga and Asahi.”

“Suga?” Hitoka chokes out. “Asahi…?”

“Sugawara,” Shimizu explains hurriedly, “and Azumane.”

Relief swells in Hitoka’s chest. “Ah, I know Sugawara-kun and Azumane-kun! They helped me carry my TV…” She reaches up unconsciously to finger her cheek, mumbling, “Azumane-kun seemed kind of scary, though…”

Shimizu laughs. It doesn’t last for very long, and she doesn’t open her mouth for it, but Hitoka is pretty sure right then that she will know it forever, and that it will pop into her mind from time to time, like a song her mind can’t overwrite.

“He seems that way, yes,” Shimizu says, eyes crinkled at the edges with mirth. “But he can be pretty timid, most of the time.”

“Ah!” Hitoka lifts one finger. “Like when he ran away from that thunder mage downstairs? Nishi… Nishimura…?”

“Nishinoya,” Shimizu says. “That’s right. See? You’ve got a knack for strangers’ names after all, Hitoka-chan.”

Hitoka is surprised her heart doesn't explode out of her ears at that. She’d been the idiot to give Shimizu permission to use her first name, sure, but how could she have predicted that it would sound like _that_?

“That’s my name!” she shrieks. “And you’re Shimizu! Right! Um—thank you!”

She may have been onto something with that quilt hermitry idea.

“Right,” Shimizu says warmly, nodding her head so that some of her hair slips past her ear and shimmers. “I’m Shimizu.”

She dips into a cursory bow, hands folded at her stomach. When she straightens, her face looks a little pinker, but maybe it’s Hitoka’s imagination, which is famously overactive.

“If you ever need anything, or—want someone to show you around the boarding house, or the city… or give you advice… just ask.” She smiles again, more than just a sliver this time, and it makes her eyes glow, like moonlight through smoke. “I’m a witch, too. Um, fortune-telling. I’m not always very… good with people… but I think we…”

She trails off, combing some of her hair aside again, adjusting her glasses. The way she pushes them up—two fingers at the edge of the frame—is so horribly cute that Hitoka is gripped by the familiar feeling that she might die.

But in a pleasant way, for once.

“Well,” she finishes, smoothing the front of her coat, even though it doesn’t need smoothing that Hitoka can see, “I hope you won’t think this too forward, but—the way your magic feels—it’s full of care. So… let’s both do our best.” Her voice softens. “Hitoka-chan.”

Hitoka wants to say that her best might never, ever be good enough for what she wants to give Shimizu, suddenly. She wants to give Shimizu hyacinths and scarlet camellias and full, bursting ferns that will never die. She wants to mend everything of Shimizu's that has ever broken. She wants to see what happens when she laughs all the way.

“S-Sure!” she says, grabbing both of Shimizu’s hands on nothing more than blind panic and then, with little other recourse, shaking them like they’ve just successfully closed a business deal together. “Thank you so much! You’re really nice!” Oh, Hitoka,  _why_? “I promise I’ll work hard!”

But Shimizu doesn’t look alarmed by this behavior, and she doesn’t look like she’s elaborately planning the most painless way to never speak to Hitoka again. She lets Hitoka shake her hands. She nods.

“Me, too,” she says.

There’s a text from Hinata waiting for her when she wobbles back inside—oh no, she didn't even invite Shimizu in for tea or  _anything_ , how can one single person possibly be so rude with such consistency—

 _from: Hinata-kun_  
_why do I feel like I just fell in love with my tamagodon? >:o_

Hitoka cracks open the door to the balcony and watches as the breeze ambles in, making her papers flutter. Her thumb hovers over the keyboard. The last of the day’s sunlight feels warm on her face.

Maybe being a city witch won’t be so bad after all.


End file.
